Shahid Akhter, Editor, ETHealthworld spoke to Jayam Vora, Co-founder and COO of Fitternity, Mumbai to know more about the transition that is seen in preventive healthcare in terms of fitness and wellness.

Fitness Market and Trends:I think you know, the way we kind of slice the market - there are two ways to look at it qualitatively and quantitatively. I think quantitatively India's at the cusp of growth when it comes to preventive healthcare in fitness services. So wellness as a, I would say as a pie together is a 100 billion dollar pie in India. The market size of fitness services in India is around $2.7 billion. It has been growing at an astonishing CAGR of 25% year on year, and it's poised to touch a $7 billion growth trend by 2024. So I think that's the India scenario in terms of how we see the market quantitatively.

Qualitatively, there have been a lot of changes over the last 5 to 10 years, right. And I think the way we've kind of looked at fitness as Indians have really changed. And there's a lot of cognizance from earlier saying that I want to be fit because I'm wanting to get married or I want to lose weight, to now saying that I actually want to live a more healthier lifestyle. And I think that's a very big cultural shift.

So what was earlier a predominant gym or yoga led industry has now actually fragmented to seven different forms of fitness. So everything from a CrossFit box near you, to a Zumba class- Indians love Zumba so all of that works really well.So those kind of fitness forms, adventure activities, spinning, even more alternate ways of you know, being fit, like going for a swim every second day. These are kind of really getting a lot of new youth and a lot of consumers into the funnel.

Fitness: Impact of TechnologyWhen you look at the Indian space, you realize that 99% of service providers are standalone service providers, they are not big box gyms or organized units, right? And hence for them to adopt technology was difficult. But I think what was a real stimulus to kind of push them to adopt technology was two things. One was, I think, from a consumer mindset point of view, a lot of search, which was earlier physical, that is me going to my neighborhood gym or asking around for a Zumba class moved online to actually searching on Google Maps to Google to now platforms like Fitternity, which kind of push the service providers to adapt technology and get online. And second, I think a very large business segment, which is still, I would say, fairly unexplored in India is the corporate wellness space where a large segment of large corporations want to kind of finance and motivate users to get into fitness.

Fitternity: Journey so farThe company was started in 2014, myself and my co-founder Neha. I think if I was just to go back to the roots on why we started, right. So I actually, you know, take you through both our journeys. Neha was a healthcare professional also done HR consulting and personally, she shifted homes and got married and was not able to find a good gym nearby. I think that was the trigger for her to say that Okay, let's start with this business. For me, I think I've always been in the healthcare space and been very passionate. I studied biomedical engineering, wanted to always create cutting edge technology which impacts healthcare. But I think through my journey, I've realized that almost everyone's focusing on health care, but on the curative side of it, but what's really required is for someone to say, Okay, let's prevent people from getting to the hospital or needing health care, right?

That's when we said that. Okay, you know what, there's no one in India really wanting to impact the preventive healthcare space. Fitness is an early adopter in the preventive healthcare space. 80% of users in India use fitness as preventive health care tool. And if that's happening, can we organize a really unorganized industry?

As a platform, I think we've also transitioned over a period of time we started off as a discovery platform. But I think as we've kind of transitioned further in the journey, we've realized that we've moved from a platform which just enables you to look at fitness in a more convenient way to actually creating curated solutions, which is really being able to solve the core challenges that users see in fitness.

I think two, three things on top of my mind, which have really been game changers for us is that from a consumer standpoint,in 2018 endis when we touched the milestone of one crore consumers, which, you know, on day one seemed almost impossible, right.

Second is we've been really proud of the fact that we've been able to curate and standardize a supply set of more than 12,000 gyms and fitness classes. So it's the largest pool of supply centers inventory onto one platform.

We were awarded and participated in this event called the Google Demo Day, which happens in the Google office in San Francisco. So they actually call over eight startups globally from I would say over 100,000 startups who apply for this program. We were the first and the only Indian company to get there.

Fitternity: As a differentiatorI think what we realized over a period of time is that there are certain challenges or gaps that conventional businesses in India are not being able to address.

So I think the last 18 months for us has been about creating and innovating product models, which are able to cater to those challenges. So, for example, in our opinion, the biggest challenge that you know, fitness users in India face is under utilization, means that I buy a fitness membership for a year and I only go end up going for 20 days- Major problem.

So we launched a product, which was our subscription product, which had two versions one was a membership which will not expire. So what it will mean is that I as a user buy 50 sessions, on Fitternity and now I can use those 50 sessions across any of the gyms to do swimming pools on the platform. And those 50 sessions are not time bound. So I can use them over a period of 10 days to 10 years and hence that under utilization of a fitness service goes out of the window. And second, the second subscription product was saying that, okay, I as an aspiring user buys a Fitternity subscription for one month or one year, and I get to use it unlimited times across any of the service providers in my network. And you will ask me, why is it important to give access to all service providers and not one gym?

Because one of the root causes of the under utilization was a lack of flexibility. Means that I own a particular gym membership, but I am traveling to another city for seven days. How do I keep my workouts going? Because the day I break my trend, and again, it's a downward spiral, right? If I'm late at work, and I can't reach my gym on time, what do I do? Or the simplest thing, I think I'm bored with the current fitness form that I'm doing and there's something really exciting now opened up near my house. Can I not move from A to B?So I think those were the core challenges that we face and we said that Okay, there will be a segment of users who would want unlimited non time bound membership, and they'll just be users who want flexibility. And we kind of provided that. And I think for us what was also been a differentiator is the partners that we've bought into the foray.

So what we've done more recently is that while we are predominantly a fitness services player, we are actually launched into eight other categories, including spa, beauty, sports, physiotherapy, diagnostics, healthy food, and so on, with the larger intend to say that Okay, now as a user Fitternity should be your one soul currency to interact and transact with wellness. So why do you use fitness as the anchor you could also use different services in that portfolio and actually mix and match your routine by working out, eating healthy, going for a massage and so forth.

Fitternity: Future PlansI think we the way we've looked at it now is that we are in 15 cities in India, we want to grow that larger footprint. We want to get to 30 cities in India in terms of our presence and our ability to connect consumers to supply which will be more geographical expansion nationally, we also are poised to launch in five locations internationally. And I think by 2020, we will be more predominantly a Southeast Asia player, let alone just being having a domestic presence. I think along with that, you know, one major business line that we would want to focus on in which we're really working towards is the corporate wellness segment.

So I think the largest step for us is about you know, predominantly moving from a fitness services provider to a larger fitness services or a larger wellness services provider and kind of becoming that one stop shop for everything wellness.

Sponsored Stories

Subscribe to our Newsletters

When the blood reaches these curves, it makes changes to its fluid mechanics and interactions with the vessel wall. In a healthy person, these changes are in harmony with the tortuous microenvironment, but when diseased, these environments could lead to very complex flow conditions that activate proteins and cells that eventually lead to blood clots.